I’ll start with a liberal inconsistency relevant to sustainability, not that they monopolize them or are the most egregious, but I have to start somewhere. Mention anything related to my environmental footprint or personal action to many liberals and I’d better prepare for them to lecture me on how BP publicized the concept to deflect blame from them to individuals, or some similar reason why their or my actions don’t[…] Keep reading →

You probably learned that the Earth wasn’t flat, nor at the center of the universe, and figured you knew the right answers for why everything seemed to rotate around it: the stars, sun, and moon. If Earth was at the center and the stars, sun, and moon rotated around it, it would like like it does. That model explains what we see simply. So why do they look that way?[…] Keep reading →

Why bother with individual action if it alone doesn’t change systems? The ignorance behind that question astounds me. I’ll put the question in parallel, equally ignorant forms: Why bother changing your baby’s diaper if it doesn’t solve infant mortality? Why take the first step of a marathon if it doesn’t take you across the finish line? Why eat healthy or exercise if it doesn’t solve obesity, diabetes, and heart disease?[…] Keep reading →

I just finished reading Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court. His coaching tells more how to live sustainably as individuals and a culture than anything else I remember reading or hearing. For those who don’t know, from Wikipedia: John Wooden (1910 – 2010) was an American basketball coach and player. He won ten NCAA national championships in a 12-year period as head coach for[…] Keep reading →

Major cultural touchstones and motivators for many people to growing material production, sales, and population are the words “be fruitful and multiply” and “have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” People nearly universally misunderstand both parts. You can be fruitful by living a sweet life and you can multiply by multiplying happiness.[…] Keep reading →

You’ve probably read things like Until the last century, people were at more risk from malnutrition or starvation than they were from obesity. This lopsided pressure may have shaped humans to be more prone to store fat than to lose it. The ability to store extra calories as fat during times of plenty could help someone stay healthy and fertile when food was scarce. I’m no anthropologist, but I’ve concluded[…] Keep reading →

If you believe that nonstop growth of the economy and population is impossible on a finite planet, you expect that either we have to stop growing deliberately or nature will cause both to collapse. If you further believe we have have overshot what Earth can sustain, you expect that even if we stop now, nature will cause both to collapse. Growing onto other planets doesn’t help because even if we[…] Keep reading →

People who suggest individual action doesn’t matter on the scale we need to restore Earth’s ability to sustain life don’t know what they’re talking about. I don’t mean that figuratively. What they’re saying is like telling someone there’s no point in playing scales on the piano to reach Carnegie Hall when no one goes there to see someone play scales and that, besides, you’ll just have to practice more anyway.[…] Keep reading →

People who suggest individual action doesn’t matter on the scale we need to restore Earth’s ability to sustain life don’t know what they’re talking about. I don’t mean that figuratively. What they’re saying is like telling someone there’s no point in changing their baby’s diaper when it won’t solve infant mortality and that, besides, the baby will need its next diaper changed too. We change our baby’s diapers to help[…] Keep reading →